When the Brush is no Mightier than the Sword
Women Artists, 1780 to 1830
The exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg which I am going to discuss today, “Women painters, Birth of a Fight (1780 - 1830)” has an agenda - to show us the constraints that women artists confronted at a particular moment and place in time (France, turn of the 19th century) as they tried to learn their craft and tried to earn their livelihoods. Most of these women artists will be new to you. And why is that?
I am going to start with a wee bit of feminism. Relax, you’ll be fine. Here goes. The first university Women’s Studies course was taught in the United States in 1966. In England, ‘that dreadful American import’ appeared a few years later. In France, intellectual feminism has a long and noble history, academic feminism, not so much.
In 1970, the first women’s art history course was offered, at Vassar, a women’s college at the time, taught by one of the hero/ines of women’s studies and art history, Linda Nochlin. Women’s studies in art history considers the work of women artists, acknowledging the barriers - societal, cultural, institutional - that have blocked their paths and thwarted their efforts. As an aside, one studies women artists at one’s peril since the study of women artists nearly always did/does negatively impact the academic progress of scholars (women, of course) in art history departments dominated, (of course), by white male tenured professors.
Linda Nochlin wrote (in 1971) “Why have there been no great women artists?” in direct response to that question - which a male gallerist had asked her. Among the points she made were these: “If women have in fact achieved the same status as men in the arts, then the status quo is fine as it is. But in actuality, … things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class and above all, male. The fault lies not in the stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education…”
Nochlin continued, “…the white Western male viewpoint …. accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian is … inadequate (as is) the entire …. elitist, individual-glorifying … substructure upon which the profession of art history is based.” Whew!
A lot has changed since Nochlin wrote her essay. But looking at this exhibition and the one currently at the Pompidou on women artists of the 19th/20th centuries, one might suggest, not enough. Although I say this with the bittersweet knowledge that the assumed perks of my 20s something white, middle-class son are mostly gone.
The curators of the exhibition at the Luxembourg think we should be long past needing to identify a painter as a “female painter”. Which is a little funny, a little sad, because the exhibition introduces us to women artists who are mostly unknown today.
The subtitle of the exhibition, ‘Birth of a Battle,’ refers to the same battle that women artists are always fighting. The battle for access to the education, to the professional societies, to the clients and commissions their male colleagues have always had. In short, the battle to be taken seriously, as students and as artists.
It is true that more women painters were active in late the 18th/early 19th centuries in France than at any previous time and anywhere else in Europe. Since women could not study at the École des Beaux-Arts until 1897, if a girl wasn’t born into a family of artists or married an artist before the 18th century, she was out of luck. But beginning in the late 18th century, she could find a male artist to teach her since there were a lot more male artists around, too (Let’s not think about the sexual abuses that must have gone on in those studios). And with so many male artists looking for work, teaching painting to young women must have been a lucrative income stream.
Women who sought artistic training were not looking to become more accomplished ’ladies’. They wanted to become professional artists. To do that, they mostly stayed single or married after their careers were established. Very few managed to combine marriage at a conventional age with a successful career. Even fewer managed to have children and careers. Sounds like a report that was written last week.
Most women painters, like their male colleagues, found clients among the new middle classes who had disposable incomes and who commissioned portraits, still lifes, landscapes and genre scenes. Their taste reminds me of something Dr. Samuel Johnson once wrote, “I would rather see the portrait of a dog that I know than all the allegorical paintings they can shew me in the world” or a similar sentiment Benjamin Franklin shared, “If I could find a Receipt (recipe) for making Parmesan Cheese, it would give me more Satisfaction than a(n) … Inscription from any (ancient) Stone…”
But why have the identities and work of so many women artists remained unknown for so long. The answer alas is obvious. Whoever writes the history gets to decide who is included in it. Male art historians have long privileged innovative artists who historical, religious and allegorical paintings commissioned by the church or state. If innovation and grand subjects are the criteria, then most women artists didn’t make the cut. And most men don’t either ! And of course, some female painters painted so well, their work has long been presumed to be by their teachers or male colleagues.
Let’s look at the paintings of a few of the artists whose works are in this exhibition. We’ll start with an artist who did aspire to become a history painter. Élisabeth Vigée LeBrun’s (1755-1842) father was a portraitist, a fan painter and her first teacher. She began painting portraits professionally in her early teens. So, when she married at the age of 22, her career was already established. And she wisely married a man who could be useful, the art dealer, J-B-P LeBrun, whose great, great uncle, Charles Le Brun had been the first president of the French Royal Academy of Painting. The contacts she made through her husband began to commissions portraits. At 25, she gave birth to her only child, a daughter Julie. The family traveled to Flanders and the Netherlands the next year and V-L fell in love with the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens. Her self portrait in a straw hat shows the influence. (Figures 1, 2)
Figure 1. Élisabeth Vigée LeBrun, self portrait in straw hat, 1782
Figure 2. Portrait of Susanna Lunden, Peter Paul Rubens.
Like Hyacinthe Rigaud whose work I discussed a few weeks ago and Joshua Reynolds, the president of the Royal Academy of Painting in England, V-L wanted to paint allegorical, biblical and historical scenes. But like them, she had to content herself with painting portraits. Luckily for her, as for Rigaud and Reynolds, she painted portraits of some of the most important people of her age. In 1778, she received a commissioned to paint the portrait of Marie-Antoinette. The result was a formal portrait of the queen in court dress. (Figure 3) It was a success and she went on to paint 30 more portraits of the queen over the next decade.
Figure 3. Portrait of Marie-Antoinette, Vigée-Lebrun, 1778
With the support of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, Vigée LeBrun was admitted into the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1783, the same year as her chief rival Adelaide Labille-Guiard, who we will discuss in a moment. When an artist was admitted into the Academy, s/he was obliged to present a morceau de reception, an oil painting. Vigee-Lebrun submitted the allegorical painting, La Paix qui ramène l’Abondance (Peace Bringing Back Prosperity). (Figure 4) She wanted to be admitted into the Academy at the highest status, as a history painter. The Academy refused. But, rather than anger the king, the Academicians simply admitted her without a category.
Figure 4. La Paix qui ramène l’Abondance (Peace Bringing Back Prosperity), Vigée-Lebrun, 1783
That same year, at the Academy’s annual exhibition, she showed a portrait of Marie-Antoinette wearing a simple white muslin dress and a straw hat. Seemed like a smart move, depict a woman condemned for extravagance in modest apparel. But V-L and M-A had gone too far, the simple costume was condemned as too casual for a public portrait of a member of the royal family. Vigee-Lebrun was asked to withdraw the painting. Which she did. Which she replaced with another painting of the queen. In a much more formal gown. Holding the same, but now wilted, flowers. (Figure 5)
Figure 5. Portraits of Marie-Antoinette, 2 versions, Vigée-LeBrun, 1783
Let me tell you about one more portrait of M-A by V-L begun in July 1785. (Figure 6) It is a portrait of the queen, portrayed as both a loving mother and the source of dynastic continuity. M-A, seated, wears a sumptuous red gown. One son is on her knee, her daughter and elder son, the dauphin, are on either side of her. An empty bassinet reminds us of the baby daughter who died while the painting was in progress.
Figure 6. Marie-Antoinette and her Children, Vigée-LeBrun, 1787
Figure 7.Beloved Mother Jean Baptiste Greuze, 1769
The portrait was an effort to restore the queen’s reputation. It is filled with religious and historical references. For example, a jewelry cabinet in the right background refers both to the Necklace scandal swirling around the queen at the time and likens M-A to the model Roman mother, Cornelia. The story is that one day, an elegant woman wearing masses of jewelry came to visit. She asked to see Cornelia’s jewels. Cornelia proudly responded by saying that her sons were her jewels. Showing M-A as a loving mother also fitted in with the concern at the time that the population of France was declining. Diderot exhorted men to have children and to have them only with their wives. Paintings of mothers and children began to proliferate. Examples exist by artists across the spectrum and range from serious to sensual. (Figures 7, 8)
Figure 8. Happy Family, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1775
With the Revolution, V-L fled France, living and working in various European capitols, as well as Russia before finally being permitted to return to France in 1802.
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, (Figure 9) was the daughter of a marchand mercier, a merchant who sold objets d’art. Which meant that L-G grew up surrounded by beautiful objects, even if her father didn’t own them. She began her studies with a first rate pastelist, Quentin de La Tour. Then she entered the studio of the respected history painter and portraitist, François André Vincent, whose son she eventually married. Like V-L, L-G gained the support of the royal family. In L-G’s case it was the king’s maiden aunts and his sister. (Figure 10)
Figure 9. The King’s Sister, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1788
Figure 10. The King’s Aunt. Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1787
The most important work by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard is her Self-Portrait with Two Pupils exhibited at the Salon of 1785.(Figure 11) The work served both to highlight her skills as a portraitist and to demonstrate her commitment to the education of young female students. She passionately fought for women’s access to professional training and petitioned for the elimination of the quota for women members of the Academy.
Figure 11. Self Portrait with two pupils, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1785
In 1876, her heirs donated this work and another to the Louvre. The museum’s director declined the gift, writing “it would be difficult to find a place in the national collections for these canvases of no artistic value”. The Louvre had already accepted several paintings by Vigee-Lebrun by then, so I guess the director felt that the quota of paintings by female artists had already been met.
I will tell you briefly about two other women, both of whom worked intimately with well known male artists. One happily, it seems, one not, as it turns out. Marguerite Gérard was the daughter of a perfumer. When she was 8, her older sister married the well known artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard. When her mother died a few years later, she went to live with her sister and brother-in-law at the Louvre. She became Fragonard’s student. For the 30 years she lived with them, she progressed from pupil to assistant to colleague. Nearly 400 of her paintings, mostly genre scenes, survive.
Of the genre scenes, many are of mothers and their children. A number of which show mothers breast feeding their babies. (Figure 12) Which is propaganda. As part of the fear I mentioned above, that the population of France was declining, was the concomitant concern about high infant mortality. And of course it was the mother’s fault because mothers sent their infants to wet nurses. That is, they sent their newborns to the homes of poor women, often in the countryside, to be breastfed. Everyone did it. For centuries. Until some men decided it had to stop. Campaigns were launched urging upper class women to breastfeed their own babies. The French biologist Linnaeus and the French philosopher Rousseau both wrote of the benefits to babies of their mothers’ breastmilk and the evils of sending babies out to wet nurse. Like I said, propaganda, with which I happen to agree. But still.
Figure 12. Mother Breastfeeding, Marguerite Gérard, 1802
Influenced by 17th century Dutch genre scenes, (Figure 13) Gérard painted an essentially female world, of interior spaces shared by women. (Figure 14) Her scenes anticipate those by 19th artists like Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. (Figures 15,16)
Figure 13. Gerard Dou
Figure 14. Marguerite Gérard
Figure 15. Two Sisters, Berthe Morisot
Figure 16. Five O'Clock Tea, Mary Cassatt,1880.Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Figure 17. Constance Mayer, self portrait, 1821
Let’s look at one final artist, Constance Mayer, (1774 - 1821) (Figure 17) the daughter of a government official who first studied with Jean-Baptiste Greuze. She was influenced by his Rococo style but apparently didn’t understand the cautionary tales which were the subject of so many of his paintings of young girls holding broken pitchers or broken eggs, both references to their lost virtue. (Figure 18) After Greuze, she studied with J-L David. Her paintings became more sober, although she continued to paint sentimental family scenes. In 1802, she moved on, to a third teacher, Pierre-Paul Prud’hon. But after all her training, which was better than his, she was more colleague than student.
Figure 18. Broken Eggs, Jean-Baptiste Greuze
When she began working in Prud’hon’s studio, he was painting a portrait of Napoleon’s Empress Josephine. Prud’hon’s wife flipped out and accused him of having an affair with the empress. She (wife, not empress) was taken to an asylum, where she stayed until her death, 15 years later. The artist was granted custody of their 5 children. What was a guy to do? Easy, Napoleon gave him lodgings at the Sorbonne and gave Mayer lodgings there, too. And before long, Mayer was living with Prud’hon, taking care of him, taking care of his kids. When his wife finally died, Mayer assumed he would marry her. Had she not paid attention to what happened to all those young women in Greuze’s paintings? Those abandoned women who had sex with men to whom they were not married? When Prud’hon refused to marry her, Mayer grabbed a razor and slit her throat. I guess Prud’hon had a penchant for fragile women. Distressed by her death, (or maybe just unable to take care of himself) he died (of natural causes) a year later. They are buried together in Paris's Père Lachaise cemetery. But the indignities keep coming. Connoisseurs, aka men, have attributed all the good work from Prud’hon’s studio to him and all the lesser work, to her. Which is proving to be wrong. No surprise there! (Figures 19, 20)
Figure 19. Sleep of Venus. Constance Mayer and / or Paul Prud’hon, 1806
Figure 20. The Torch of Venus Constance Mayer incorrectly attributed to Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, 1808
Next week’s topic is a lot less sober - ‘Empire of the Senses’-Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard. Perky breasts & bouncy bare bottoms. (Figure 21)
Figure 21. Mlle O’Murphy, François Boucher
Copyright © 2021 Beverly Held, Ph.D. All rights reserved
To learn more (you know you want to!!):
Howard V. & Charlotte B Evans. Women Artists in Eighteenth-Century France, vol. 1. 1982 www.erudit.org
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